Abstract [en]

The friction and adhesion between pairs of materials (silica, alumina, and polytetrafluoroethylene) have been studied and interpreted in terms of the long-ranged interactions present. In ambient laboratory air, the interactions are dominated by van der Waals attraction and strong adhesion leading to significant frictional forces. In the presence of the ionic liquid (IL) ethylammonium nitrate (EAN) the van der Waals interaction is suppressed and the attractive/adhesive interactions which lead to "stiction" are removed, resulting in an at least a 10-fold reduction in the friction force at large applied loads. The friction coefficient for each system was determined; coefficients obtained in air were significantly larger than those obtained in the presence of EAN (which ranged between 0.1 and 0.25), and variation in the friction coefficients between systems was correlated with changes in surface roughness. As the viscosity of ILs can be relatively high, which has implications for the lubricating properties, the hydrodynamic forces between the surfaces have therefore also been studied. The linear increase in repulsive force with speed, expected from hydrodynamic interactions, is clearly observed, and these forces further inhibit the potential for stiction. Remarkably, the viscosity extracted from the data is dramatically reduced compared to the bulk value, indicative of a surface ordering effect which significantly reduces viscous losses.

In thesis

Álvarez-Asencio, Rubén

KTH, School of Chemical Science and Engineering (CHE), Chemistry, Surface and Corrosion Science.

2014 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)

Abstract [en]

When two surfaces achieve contact, then contact phenomena such as adhesion, friction and wear can occur, which are of great interest in many disciplines, including physics, physical chemistry, material chemistry, and life and health sciences. These phenomena are largely determined by the nature and magnitude of the surface forces such as van der Waals, capillary and hydration forces. Moreover these forces are length-dependent, and therefore when the system scales down, their contribution scales up, dominating the interaction between the surfaces.

A goal of my PhD work was to investigate fundamental contact phenomena in terms of the surface forces that regulate their properties. The primary tool applied in this PhD thesis work has been the atomic force microscopy (AFM), which (with all of its sub-techniques) offers the possibility to study such forces with high resolution virtually between all types of materials and intervening media. Therefore, in this work it was possible to study the long ranged interactions presented in air between different industrially relevant materials and how these interactions are shielded when the systems are immersed in an ionic liquid.

Also investigated was the influence of microstructure on the tribological properties of metal alloys, where their good tribological properties were related with the vanadium and nitrogen contents for a FeCrVN tool alloy and with the chromium content for a biomedical CoCrMo alloy. Moreover, the effect of the intervening media can significantly affect the surface properties, and when the biomedical CoCrMo alloy was immersed in phosphate buffer saline solution (PBS), repulsive hydration forces decreased the friction coefficient and contact adhesion. On the other hand, with the immersion of the FeCrVN tool alloy in the NaCl solution, small particles displaying low adhesion were generated in specific regions on the surface with low chromium content. These particles are assumed to be related to a prepitting corrosion event in the tool alloy.

The mechanical properties of stratum corneum (SC), which is the outermost layer of the skin, were also studied in this work. The SC presents a highly elastic, but stiff surface where the mechanical properties depend on the nanoscale. A novel probe has been designed with a single hair fibre in order to understand how the skin deforms locally in response to the interaction with such a fibre probe. This study revealed that is mostly the lateral scale of the deformation which determines the mechanical properties of the SC.

Finally, important achievements in this work are the developments of two new techniques - tribological property mapping and the Hybrid method for torsional spring constant evaluation. Tribological property mapping is an AFM technique that provides friction coefficient and contact adhesion maps with information attributed to the surface microstructure. The Hybrid method is an approach that was originally required to obtain the torsional spring constants for rigid beam shaped cantilevers, which could not be previously determined from their power torsional thermal spectra (conventional method). However, the applicability is shown to be general and this simple method can be used to obtain torsional spring constants for any type of beam shape cantilever.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2014. p. xviii, 78

Series

TRITA-CHE-Report, ISSN 1654-1081 ; 2014:13

National Category

Nano Technology

Research subject

Chemistry

Identifiers

urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-145727 (URN)978-91-7595-102-7 (ISBN)

Public defence

2014-06-13, F3, Lindstedtsvägen 26, KTH, Stockholm, 10:00 (English)

Opponent

Giasson, Suzanne

Université de Montréal, Canada .

Supervisors

Rutland, Mark W.

KTH, School of Chemical Science and Engineering (CHE), Chemistry, Surface and Corrosion Science.